Movieworld Douglaston
242-02 61st Avenue,
Douglaston,
NY
11362
242-02 61st Avenue,
Douglaston,
NY
11362
7 people
favorited this theater
Showing 26 - 50 of 55 comments
Any one know the number to this theatre?
Driving by the theater today the sign outside the shoppong plaza for the theater says grand reopening soon.
I heard news that the theater will open again soon , by one of the partners of the Cinemaword chain of Corum and Mastic before they split up and became independant. . Please let them redo the complex with better seats, new carpet and maybe implode the # of theaters to 4 or 5
I drove past there today and I have a feeling that this will be converted to retail. The listing should be changed to closed
I drove by the Douglaston theater today. On set of doors there is a sign that says “closed for renovations'. The others have "Closed” spelled out. Unfortunately there is also a city marshall’s notice saying the theater was seized April 8. Does that mean that if someone pays their bills it will reopen. Last films inclued Horton Hears a Who, Drillbit Taylor, Vantage Point and College Road Trip. They had a few posters up for summer films like Meet Dave with Eddie Murphy so I guess this was unexpected. How do the workers find out?
Since we can’t post on the “Fair Theatre” site anymore, I thought since this place recently closed, I noticed in todays New York Post, April 12, 2008, that both the Movieland Douglaston is still listed as ‘closed’ and now the Fair Theatre is listed as ‘closed’ also. The last true “grindhouse” within the 5 boroughs is gone, as well as Movieland and Ridgewood. Man they’re dropping like flies.
Does anyone know what the last pictures to play here were?
Who owned the Douglastown theater. It seems weird that it basically closed the same week as the American in Parkchester before Bow Tie took over. For some reason I thought that the Douglaston was part of a small chain that included 2of the either the Sunnyside, Main St Flushing and Kew Gardens.
News has been posted about Bowtie Cinemas taking over the American Theatre in the Bronx. Maybe its possible they can take this one over as well.
It’s not in the theater listing so my feeling is that this theatre is officially closed. I’ll pass by there to see if this is official.
New York Post listing for Friday April 4, 2008, “Theatre Closed”.
Not to mention that the sticky old theatres in Times Square had a hell of a lot of character. This dump represents the absolute nadir of movie theatre design and construction. The kind of generic concrete bunker shopping center multiplexes that were cheaply spackled together in the late ‘70’s and early '80’s all over the country.
Those Times Square Theatres were palaces in their heyday. This place was awful the day it opened.
I’m not sure why there’s so much enmity directed towards this theater. I’ve always been fascinated by its unique location underneath an elevated shopping center. It’s not in an awful state of disrepair and the lobby has a pleasant retro theater/lounge look to it. The place is certainly better than the old seedy Times Square theaters with “sticky” seats. I love how people wax poetic about those kinds of places when they don’t have to live or work anywhere near them.
wow! the lobby looks a lot better than what it used to.
The theatre is like the like small screening rooms like The Movies at Sunrise Mall that closed five years ago
I suppose I can’t argue with that, RobertR. The closest theater would probably be the single screen cinema in the North Shore Towers – which creatively books multiple films by alternating show times throughout the day. Otherwise, you have to go to the 6 screen plex behind the Bay Terrace shopping center or travel all the way to Valley Stream for the Green Acres or Sunrise Cinemas multiplexes. Still, if I lived in the area, I’d make the trip to some other theater!
The only good thing about Movieworld is that it’s an open theatre for people to go to until something better is built in the vicinity. Look at Brooklyn there are almost no theatres left, even a subpar complex like Movieworld would make money in the right location.
All I can say is the place must have had quite the publicist on the job when providing information for that article! Grand foyer indeed!
Warren… I assume you were being facetious in your last post, otherwise I’d love to know who said that the grand lobby of this dump was modelled after the forecourt of Grauman’s Chinese Theater! For starters, that person would never be allowed to use the word “grand” again! Believe me when I tell you that there is nothing in the least bit grand about this place. But, I suspect you are well aware of that fact.
I actually drove over to the theater that very afternoon that I read your post to see if maybe I had been too harsh on the place. I had my digital camera with me and was able to snap a few photos of the exterior plus a few of the lobby through the glass entrance doors. Not the greatest images, but I didn’t feel like asking for permission (nor do I think it would have been granted) to walk past the ticket taker to get some better shots.
Anyway, here we go:
Flamboyant parking lot signage
Way back under the parking deck
The charming facade
Entrance doors
Left side of lobby
Candy counter through exit doors
Right side of lobby through exit doors
The layout is pretty common, with the candy counter being the focal point of the large lobby. As you walk in the entrance, the box office is immediately to your left (you can make out some customers purchasing tickets in the 4th photo down). Once you get your tickets, you turn to the right and immediately have your stub ripped before entering the lobby (you can see the ticket takers station in the 5th photo down). I spoke briefly with the ticket taker who informed me that the place was completely refurbished within the last 2 years and it does look like the lobby floor is new and the appointments spiffed up a bit. If there were any replicas of the hand and foot prints of the stars ala Grauman’s (which I don’t recall at all, honestly), they seem to have been removed as part of the overhaul. At the far left end of the lobby (I couldnt' get a shot of this) there is also a chain pizza cafe outlet as an adjunct to the candy counter. And they serve Starbuck’s coffee.
No amount of renovations, however, could have imbued any sort of charm in the screening rooms. I don’t think I’ll ever revisit this particular theater as a paying customer.
Next to the recently demolished Cinema City 5, I believe this is the worst movie theater I’ve ever attended. The now gutted Movies at Bayside would probably come in third. Someone above compared it to a “horrible Times Square theater before Disney took over”, but that’s an insult to those delightfully dilapidated fun houses which while dirty and uncared for at least had the charm of their age, history and faded beauty. This complex opened on the cheap and went downhill ever since, despite whatever overhauls might have taken place to install preview monitors and stereo sound. Many of the auditoriums are just long and narrow white boxes with low cielings and a center aisle. The last movie I saw here was “Pulp Fiction” and I swore the place off after that.
Korvettes is long gone… I only hope and pray that this dump will soon be gone as well.
I also feel that the layout is awful. The last time I was at this theatre was about 15 years ago.
I also feel that the layout is awful. The last time I was at this theatre was about 15 years ago.
I wonder why Regal got out of this place. It did decent numbers considering it was a pretty awful layout.
It is no longer owned by Regal. It is now an independent which uses Lesser as a booking service. No major renovations have been done on that theatre. My mom says that it still looks the same when United Artists ran it. It is still a sevenplex. It has a dining section but theatres are all the same.